The last two months could safely be called the Spring of Travel, with me hopping on an airplane to somewhere new almost every other week it seems. It’s time to start catching up on some of this fun travel before any MORE happens, so let’s take a trip out west to Grande Prairie, Alberta!

Welcome to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science! The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Meeting’s welcome reception was held here last week. This museum is trying out some interesting and different exhibition ideas that I haven’t seen too often elsewhere, so let’s take a look at some highlights.

I was in Mongolia when this story originally appeared in the news, but I like it too much to not mention it here on the blog.

Last August, Edmonton city construction workers were digging a new sewer tunnel when they discovered dinosaur bones! My fellow ankylosaur worker Mike Burns, and Don Brinkman from the Royal Tyrrell Museum helped out at the site for about two weeks, excavating bits and pieces of Edmontosaurus and Albertosaurus. In particular, some awfully nice Albertosaurus teeth were found.

Image from the Edmonton Sun.

Mike has mentioned that it was a lot of fun to get lowered down into the tunnel each day. I suspect this was quite an unusual excavation experience – we don’t usually work deep underground when digging up dinosaurs!

Overall, the material looks quite similar to a bonebed we’ve been excavating in the south of Edmonton for the last several years – dark black shales, and dark black bones. There’s a good chance there’s dinosaurs underneath us everywhere in Edmonton, but they’re covered up by trees and roads and buildings and such.

The University of Alberta has a pretty active Palaeontological Society with undergrad, grad student, and faculty members, and when we can we try to organize palaeo-themed field trips. Lucky for us, this summer Edmonton had a very cool new dinosaur attraction open called the Jurassic Forest, so of course we had to check it out.